Gifted Residential Program - July 2024

Navin Kabra is CTO and Co-Founder at ReliScore, a company that provides skill and capability assessment solutions to the software industry. He also consults and advises multiple GoI initiatives, as well as fintech companies in the private sector (Innoviti - payments processing, and FinIQ - derivatives and other financial products).

Navin has several peer-reviewed articles in international conferences / journals and is also an inventor on 18 US Patents, 2 European Patents, and 1 Japanese Patent, filed as part of his work for 3 different companies (Symantec, Veritas, TeraData).

Navin has an undergrad degree (IIT Bombay) and a Ph.D (Univ of Wisconsin, Madison), both in Computer Science.

Navin has designed and delivered more than a dozen courses on Technology and related themes at previous Summer and Online programs.

Ashish teaches courses in economics, finance and statistics at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. He also blogs daily at econforeverybody.com, and his mission in life is to make learning as fun as possible for as many people as possible.

Ashish has a PhD in economics from the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, and his corporate work experience includes stints with Genpact, Fidelity Investments and Suzlon.

In May 2023, Ashish will be facilitating 3 courses that are at the intersection of his domain expertise: "Economics & Life Choices" and "Data, Visualisation & Statistics", and "Introduction to Public Policy"

Amaresh is helping to develop Bridge in India and around the world.

A teacher at heart, Amaresh's mission is to introduce Bridge softly to children (and adults) via his Double Dummy App - KIDA. This App is translated into 40 languages. Amaresh has also designed a precursor to Bridge, called Hool, which has been featured on the World Bridge Federation site as one of the more interesting tools to learn Bridge. Amaresh has also contributed to the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), the governing organisation for Contract Bridge in North America.

He is actively involved in teaching bridge in the village of Raibidpura (in tribal district Khargone, MP) where he uses bridge to teach math in the schools. Amaresh also introduces city children to Bridge through his work with schools such as Bombay Scottish and BIS.

Amaresh teaches the essence of Bridge, to participants on GenWise programs.

Ramya is an architect and development practitioner passionate about contributing to the social and cultural spheres through people-centric design. Her interests lie at the intersection of culture, co-design and development.

At present, she guides an architecture studio called ‘Designing with People’ at CEPT University, Ahmedabad. Alongside this, she runs an interdisciplinary practice called ‘The Design Toolbox’, focusing on design education and research. Having worked with architecture practices and social organizations, she has professional experience in architectural design, development research and curatorial projects.

Ramya has an MSc. in Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD) from the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, and a B.Arch from CEPT University, Ahmedabad. She is a recipient of the Chevening Scholarship, the UK government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the FCO and partner organisations (2016-17), and the Archival and Museum Fellowship, offered by the India Foundation for the Arts and the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore (2019-20).

Ramya facilitates courses on Design through Architecture at our Programs.

Rupin Chheda has a background in engineering, and is a tinkerer at heart. None of his childhood toys survived in one piece for more than 30 minutes! He was always curious to know what’s inside them. This curiosity led him to neatly unscrew all his toys and gadgets and explore what’s inside.

His life story has been about significant engineering failures, like building a 3D printer multiple times (and not succeeding even once), building softwares that no one ever used, or just generally fooling around with new things and systems. The larger idea has always been about building things without any preconceived notions of what success looked like. The absolute fun of creating is not being overwhelmed by constraints!

On the professional front, he has almost two decades of experience in the IT development and consulting industry, 0 to 1 startup scaling, and has served as Assistant VP for WhiteHatJr.

He currently leads the STREAM practice for the prestigious Kanakia Educational Institutions in Mumbai.

Rupin will facilitate the course on bio-inspired robotics in 2023.

Scharada Dubey is the author of 19 books in the different genres of narrative non-fiction and children’s writing. She has a rich and varied experience of work across media, ranging from radio broadcasting in the 1980s with All India Radio, video reporting on Doordarshan in the 90s and contributing content to portal websites since the internet first gained ground in India. She has written for print media and for leading news websites on the internet. More details of her life and work can be found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scharada_Dubey

Presently, she lives in Bangalore, and works on ghostwriting projects, completing books for celebrity authors.

Scharada has conducted multiple creative writing courses for gifted students. Some of her students have won writing prizes, and one of them went on to publish her first book.

Scharada holds a First Class B.A in English (1980) and a Second Class M.A in Sociology (1983) from the University of Mumbai and an M.A in English with an Outstanding grade from Savitribai Phule Pune University (2015). She is also certified as a Trainer for the Cambridge English Assessment Exams with a Grade A certificate in the BEC Higher examination commensurate to C2 level proficiency in English under the CEFR guidelines.

Scharada facilitates courses on Creative Writing and allied topics for Gifted students.

A story-teller by passion, Prasanna weaves stories with data and possibilities.

A seasoned management consultant, he moved into the development sector through the prestigious Teach for India fellowship after working for 8 years at SymphonyIRI and Genpact.

As a Consumer-behavior driven Strategy Consultant, Prasanna has led multiple programs for the Fortune 500 retailers.He had also been a key resource in public health campaign, "Let's Move!", led by Michelle Obama, to reduce childhood obesity. As an educator in a classroom, he taught in a government school and implemented data- centric designs to build a customized bucket of repository for each stakeholder in the school.

Prasanna is also the founder of Augmented Understanding, a data science consultancy that helps organizations to leverage data in order to drive better business outcomes.

Prasanna facilitates sessions around Data Science on our various programs.

Muralidhar (aka Murali) is senior mentor and course designer at GenWise with 20+ years of experience in the social sector. In addition to delivering Vocational Training to young adults, he is currently responsible for design, manufacturing and marketing operations at a traditional handicraft (wooden toys) enterprise near Bengaluru. Murali has also delivered training and professional development programs for secondary school science teachers and 'making' skills to "gifted students" for around 4 years.

Murali has a bachelor's degree in Engineering from IIT Madras.

Garu (as Murali is fondly referred to) has facilitated numerous courses at the online and residential programs at GenWise, over the years. In May 2022, Garu will facilitate the session "Throwing Light on Colour" at the GenWise Jr 2022 Program, as also "Introduction to Design & Engineering: via Bicycles!" for the senior students.

Jayasree is a senior mentor and course designer at GenWise. A passionate Math educator, Jayasree Subramanian, has made it her mission to share with learners the fascination that she has for Maths and initiate them into the joy of finding things out for themselves. This has led her to work with students at all levels – right from middle school to undergraduates - for 20+ years. She also worked at Educational Initiatives, creating assessments, learning modules and teacher support material.

Jayasree is a University rank holder in her bachelors program, has a Masters degree in Maths (IIT Madras) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Math Education at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.

Jayasree is a Senior Mentor at GenWise. She has delivered multiple sessions on our GenWise programs.

Asmita is an inspiring leader who has dedicated her career to making a difference in the world. With a strong academic background in Political Science and a Masters degree in Public Policy, she has the knowledge and expertise to understand the complexities of the world we live in.

After a successful stint in the corporate world, Asmita made the brave decision to pursue her passion for education. She became a Teach for India fellow, teaching in a government school for two years and making a profound impact on the lives of her students.

From there, Asmita joined Shiv Nadar School as an English and Social Science educator, where she continued to inspire and educate the next generation. In 2020, she took her passion for education to the next level, founding Via News Didi - a social enterprise that empowers students to make a positive change in the world around them.

Asmita's commitment to education and her expertise in politics and public policy have made Via News Didi one of the most exciting and innovative organizations in the space. Currently being incubated at Teach for India's InnovatED program, Asmita and her team are poised to make a real difference in the world.

Asmita facilitates courses on empowering students to make a positive change in the world around them.

Radha is senior mentor and course designer at GenWise.

Her view of the world is one of hidden connections and she believes that a significant part of learning is to unearth these connections. She is an environmental scientist by training, with a deep interest in exploring and practicing "transformative education for sustainable living". Towards this effort she is engaging actively with rural and urban communities to further the idea of food sovereignty.

After 18 years as a global environmental consultant, Radha also wore the teacher's hat for several years at the Rishi Valley School, teaching Environmental Sustainability. She is a Visiting Faculty at the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and engages actively in popular education efforts around sustainability.

Radha has a bachelor's degree in Genetics from the Madras University, a Master's from Osmania University, and a Ph.D from IIT Bombay in Environmental Science.

Radha has facilitated several pioneering courses on Sustainability and related thems at various GenWise summer and year-round programs. In May 2022, Radha will be facilitating the course "Life, The City, and Changing Climate".